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The News Star began in 1890 as the Monroe Evening News. John Travis Nixon, a native of Illinois, and a partner, Julius Cheney, became the publishers in 1893, but Nixon soon left for Crowley in Acadia Parish, where he began what is now the Crowley Post Signal.[1]

In 1909, coincidentally the year that John Travis Nixon died at the age of forty-one, the The Evening News merged with The Daily Star to form the afternoon newspaper, The Monroe News-Star.[2] In 1908, Robert Wilson Ewing, I (1859–1931), while still the publisher of the since defunct New OrleansDaily States, purchased the Shreveport Times. In 1929, Ewing bought the since defunct Monroe Morning World. In 1930, he acquired the News-Star, since switched from an afternoon to a morning publication. Ewing was accordingly among the two or three most influential persons in the Louisiana journalism community.[3] The two Monroe newspapers remained in the Ewing family until the Gannett acquisition on June 16, 1977. The Morning World and News-Star consolidated on August 4, 1980, to become The News-Star-World. The name was later changed and the first edition of The News Star was printed on May 22, 1988.[2]

John D. Ewing (1892–1952), one of the five sons of Robert Ewing, was editor and publisher of the Shreveport Times and the Monroe News-Star-World from 1931 until his death. John Ewing moved to Shreveport in 1915 to become the associate publisher of the Shreveport Times. When his father died, Ewing became the publisher of the Shreveport Times and both Monroe papers. All three newspapers were known for their conservative editorials.[4]

Robert Ewing, III (1935–2007), a nephew of John Ewing, was a nature photographer and served as a News Star board member.[5] Another Ewing relative, Edmund Graves Brown (1921–2008), was a News Star executive who served as the assistant general manager until Gannett, an Arlington, Virginia, firm, purchased the combined News-Star-World.[6] In 1980, “World” was dropped from the name, which became the News Star, without a hyphen.